As successive generations of mobile devices come to market, mobile devices of a particular generation often have more features and operations than the generations that came before it. For instance, older generations of mobile devices often had limited functionality, such as for use as a telephone, while newer generations combine many features and operations in a single device, including a mobile telephone, media viewer, camera, geolocation device, and mobile computer. In addition, many newer generations of devices include monitoring of personal status information relating to vital statistics of a user of the device, such as heart rate, respiration rate, and other vital parameters.
The inclusion of such new features and functions may complicate design of devices, including form factor design for a device, as components to support such additional features may add hardware required to support such features, thus increasing size and cost of the device. Approaches are desired which add features and operations, without adding significantly to the need for additional electronic components to support such features and operations.